What We Learned

The majority of Political Punditry since last Tuesday has been about how Romney &/or Winger Media &/or GOP Voters blew the election.  But I think what needs to be addressed here - and hammered home until it's accepted as Gospel - is that the Republican party leaders decided the core of their strategy was to make Obama a one-term POTUS.  Nothing else - just that.

It failed miserably - and why anybody has to take any time to point that out to anybody is beyond the understanding of the Swamis.  C'mon, when you lose a general election by almost 3 points and 126 Electoral Votes, you can't make any credible claims to having worked out anything that even remotely resembles good policy alternatives.

Your "policy" failed.

Your party failed.

You failed.

And when you lose the election among the various demographic subsets by 30 or 40 or 90 points, you have to acknowledge that your "policy" has been repudiated by the voters in terms of certainty greater than what we use to describe the local effects of Gravity, or to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow morning somewhere to the east of wherever the fuck we're standing right now.

So here's the thing, Mr Senate Minority Leader:  Get up off your dead brown-eyed ass and start helping.  Step up or step aside.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Cred Check

We should remind ourselves once in a while just how stupid and wrong our crystal-gazing prognostications can look after some time has passed (and thus be a little cautious about what we're predicting will happen).   I guess what irritates me the most is that some of these guys insist we take them seriously even after they've been proven wrong time and again.

"So now we stand at an epochal moment. The debate is over. The case has gone to the jury, and the jury is history. Events will soon reveal who was right, Bush or Chirac ... But there are two nations whose destinies hang in the balance. The first, of course, is Iraq. Will Iraqis enjoy freedom, more of the same tyranny, or a new kind of tyranny? The second is the United States. If the effort to oust Saddam fails, we will be back in the 1970s. We will live in a nation crippled by self-doubt. If we succeed, we will be a nation infused with confidence. We will have done a great thing for the world, and other great things will await," -David Brooks, March 17, 2003 - from a Glenn Greenwald piece at salon.com